Citizens
by Simon Schama
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Book Summary Information
Author: Simon SchamaEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Import
Published: 2004-08-05
ISBN: 0141017279
Number of pages: 848
Publisher: Penguin
Book Reviews of Citizens
Book Review: Literally couldn't put it down
Summary: 5 Stars
I do not remember the last time a work of fiction kept me awake because I couldn't stop reading it; this work of serious history did. Finally, here is a writer of history who writes not only well but brilliantly. His choice of anecdote to illuminate the character of a man or a moment is inspired.
This may very well be an incomplete or imbalanced account of the French Revolution, but critics who complain about it on that score seem to think that it is intended to stand on its own, that we are to judge it as if it purported to be the only word to be said on its subject. On the contrary, any serious history must be read in the context of previous books on the same subject, as a response to and corrective of earlier views. That is certainly the case here: Schama is explicitly correcting what he views as the error of earlier historians. Specifically, he is arguing that there is no meaningful distinction to be made between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, and that as a result the whole account of a bourgeois revolution is an illusion. To illustrate this he provides abundant evidence of the ease with which successful middle-class men entered and flourished in the highest echelons of the upper-class. His case may well be incorrect, but those who would argue against it will have to respond specifically to his arguments and his evidence. No future Soboul will be able to speak of a bourgeois revolution as if that were an uncontested fact.
Some of the criticism this book has recieved is ridiculous. Nowhere does Schama denigrate the Declaration of the Rights of Man. He merely refrains from fawning over it. Do we really need another glowing bit of propaganda for liberal democracy? Didn't we get enough of that in high school? Again, this book is an attempt to correct a historical imbalance. To spend pages extolling the virtues of liberty and sweep mass murder under the rug is not acceptable. Schama gives liberty its due, and is very generous towards the many men and women who did not approve of the killing sprees but still believed the revolution was worth fighting for. In the end however he will not excuse or explain away the killing. There he is different from the hypocritical tendency of which an article by Adam Gopnik is a model, an article in which the murders are blithely called "excesses" in what one is led to regard as a good cause. That half the people I've mentioned this book to recently seem to think the French Revolution was a romantic adventure of fighting for freedom shows how very needed Schama's account was and is.
There are flaws. The story, despite the author's brilliant tactic of using certain characters (Talleyrand, Lafayette, the Queen, Lucy de la Tour du Pin, Malesherbes) as unifying threads, does meander, and one wonders sometimes whether the episodes which recieve treatment of baroque fullness merit the space, and whether some other things might not have deserved some more attention. We are not shown, for example, how Robespierre came to power, or how he changed from an opponent of the death penalty to the high-priest of pseudo-judicial murder. In general one might have wanted more of the sans-culottes--we get a lot of their offical spokesmen but not enough of the crowd itself. What did they believe? Why did they support what they did? Because of these and other flaws I was tempted to give it only four stars--but I recall that one book cannot be everything.
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